In one of my first posts I shared my low-calorie shrimp jambalaya with egg noodles recipe with you all, but I thought I would push myself to make it EVEN healthier. And what can be healthier than salad? I assure you this salad is still full of zesty flavor, filling and super quick to prepare (I made this in less than 30 minutes). A triple threat. In fact, I nearly lifted my shirt it was so good, but then I decided to just keep it on. I have enough of those stinkin’ beads already (yes, that was a bad Mardi Gras joke).

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t really measure ingredients, but rely on my good ol’ fashioned taste buds. I encourage you to do the same with this recipe as you really can’t mess it up. No, really, you can’t.

This jambalaya requires four simple to prepare parts, made in the following order – homemade Cajun salad dressing (I’ll admit this is quite close to tasting like a Greek dressing, but it uses a basic Cajun seasoning mix – so, it’s Cajun!), seasoned croutons, jambalaya flavored shrimp and salad fixin’s. I added a few croutons on the salad because I had some day old bread to use up, but if you want to lighten this up even more than just omit these or substitute with some pepitas for some added crunch and nuttiness. In the future I might switch out the croutons for some quinoa for some added protein.

Yum. Yum. Now let’s get started.

Homemade Cajun Salad DressingMake the dressing first and set aside. If time allows, make a day ahead to let flavors meld together.

1. Preheat oven to 375°. Line baking pan with foil. Place bread cubes in a bowl and drizzle with olive oil. Add seasonings and toss to coat. Spread out in a single layer on foil lined pan and place in oven. Bake until golden brown with crunchy texture – approximately 5 minutes. Keep an eye on these babies so they don’t burn 🙂 Take out of oven and set aside to cool.

1. Place shrimp in a bowl and toss with dried herbs and a couple of dashes of Worcestershire sauce.
2. Heat up a skillet to medium heat and melt butter. Add in garlic, celery, tomatoes and jalapeño and cook for a few minutes until tomatoes start to get mushy.
3. Add shrimp into cooked vegetables, turn down heat and mix to coat. Add salt to taste. Cook shrimp JUST until they turn pink and then remove from heat. Do not overcook.

Salad Fixin’sFeel free to use up whatever veggies you have in the fridge as that is exactly what I did 🙂

After you have prepared the Cajun salad dressing, jambalaya flavored shrimp and the croutons (unless omitting). Put the salad fixings in the bowl and layer on the shrimp and croutons and drizzle with yummy Cajun dressing. Stand back and admire. Take a picture or two. Post to Instagram and taunt your friends with the delicious healthy meal you just made. Oh, and then eat the damn thing!

I have this mission every night when I’m cooking dinner. Well, most nights. Ok, just lately.

The mission is called “no vegetable left behind.” That is, I try to use (within reason) as many different vegetables that are likely to taste good together in every dish. And so far, I haven’t found many that don’t go too well together.

Tonight I made a healthy and easy (yes, we like those two words used together), AND delicious (I sealed the deal for you right there) stir fry bowl. While I didn’t serve it with any carb, you are free to eat this whatever way you would like (without judgement).

The best part of this delicious bowl is that it is filled with fresh ingredients that are filling and great for promoting a taught tummy. (but, you don’t have to take my word for it – go ahead, Google it).

STEPS
1. Heat olive oil in large sauté pan over medium heat until heated. Add garlic, onions, peppers and jalapeños and sauté over medium heat until browned.
2. Add greens (a lot of greens, it amazingly cooks down very quickly). Sauté greens with the onion, pepper mixture until it just starts to wilt. Add soy sauce and fresh grated ginger. Stir. Add lime juice. Stir.
3. Add shrimp to pan and toss with ingredients. Cook for several more minutes, or until shrimp has turned pink and greens have cooked down and wilted.
4. Scoop into bowl and top with sliced avocado, toasted almonds and cilantro.

This is one of those posts that I almost want to start with a “why bother.” Why bother because I am posting on how to use up those delicious St. Patrick’s day leftovers a week later. Likely (aka hopefully) you don’t have any left, but perhaps you froze some of your corned beef for later. If that’s the case, then you’re in luck. But even if you need to create the filling from scratch, these are some delicious and SUPER EASY pierogi.

In our household the Polish (that’s me) and Irish (that’s my hubs) play nicely, so what a lovely way to combine some of our loves into one tasty lil’ dumpling.

Side note: depending on who in my family you ask, some will tell you that we are German, others will tell you we are Polish.

I made these pierogi a little more healthful by using half whole wheat flour and substituting plain Greek yogurt for what would be sour cream.

This recipe created enough dough for me to make about 40 pierogi. I boiled and sauteed about 20 of them for dinner and leftovers the next day. The other 20 I froze for a quick weeknight dinner. They need to be frozen individually first (so that they don’t all freeze together in a big clump) by laying them out on a pan sprinkled with cornmeal and once frozen throw them into a freezer bag and back into the freezer. I have a feeling I (or my hubby) will thank me for that later.

Here is the recipe – be sure to comment and let me know how you liked them!

Ingredients

1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl using hands to mix together until a dough forms. A stand mixer with a paddle attachment can also be used for this. The dough will be very sticky at this point.

2. Take the dough out of the bowl and put onto a well floured board. Divide the dough in half. Knead each piece of dough a few times on the floured surface until less sticky but still tacky. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let rest for 10 minutes.

The dough just hangin' out waiting to be made into pierogi

3. On a well floured surface, roll each half of the dough into a thin circle, 1/4-inch thick. Cut the dough using a 3-inch circle cutter.

All ready to be filled with yummy fillings!

Filling

I used the leftover potatoes and carrots from my crock pot that were cooked with the corned beef. Cooking the potatoes with the corned beef provided a lot of flavor to the potato filling. If you are making this from scratch you will need to boil some potatoes.

Variations for filling: Just potato and cheese or ground beef and onion

1. Caramelize the onion with some butter and olive oil. Remove the potatoes and carrots from the liquid in the crock pot and heat them up in a pan. Add the caramelized onions to the potatoes and mash together. Add the cheese and mix together.

2. Place 1 tablespoon of the potato filling in the center of each circle of dough and lay a small piece of corned beef on top and fold over. Press and seal into half-moon shapes. Use a little water to seal the pierogi. Using the tines of a fork press around the edge gently to get a good seal.

Fill 'er up! Almost there...

Filled and sealed. Ready to be cooked and eaten! YUMM!

3. In a pot of boiling, salted water, cook the pierogi for 8 minutes, or until they float. Remove from the water and drain.

4. In a saute pan, melt some butter. Sear the pierogi for 2 to 3 minutes on each side, or until they are golden brown. Remove from the pan. The pierogi will need to be sauteed in batches.

Garnish with green onion and serve with sour cream (or more Greek yogurt if you’re trying to save calories). I served this delicious dish with a green salad.

This week I have been terrible with getting my posts up for the dishes I have created. No real excuses, just life. But I will have a really yummy winter meal coming in one of my next posts – creamy polenta with chicken in a mushroom red wine sauce 🙂

But first things, first. Today is St. Paddy’s day, and in true St. Patrick’s day style, I have a corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots cooking away in my crock pot right now. My hubby is Irish, so today is sort of a big deal to him. Bigger than any other holiday. He has mandated (rather lovingly) that we listen to the Celtic station on Pandora ALL day. So, as I am typing away my foot is tapping to the tune of an Irish jig. [Oh yeah!]

Since I didn’t really do anything special with the corned beef and cabbage, I felt the need to make the homemade Irish soda bread with a twist. But really, the truth is… I just don’t like following recipes. Perhaps it is a need to make my life more difficult than it needs to be, or maybe it is just that cooking and baking is a creative outlet for me. 😉 Yep, that’s it.

I’m not as confident in my baking skills as I am in my cooking, probably because baking is more of a science. As such, I typically start a baking adventure by finding an inspiration recipe to go off of and then make it my own if possible. This recipe is inspired by the recipe for Irish Soda Bread by Barefoot Contessa, I just love her.

Directions

Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add the butter and mix on low speed until the butter is mixed into the flour.

With a fork, lightly beat the buttermilk, egg, and orange zest together in a measuring cup. With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture. Combine the dried cranberries with 2 teaspoons of flour and mix into the dough. Add the chopped hazelnuts and mix. The dough will be very sticky.

Dump the dough onto a well-floured board and knead it a few times into a round loaf. Place the loaf on the prepared pie pan and lightly cut an X into the top of the bread with a serrated knife.

Combine the melted butter and warmed buttermilk. Brush the top of the loaf with the melted butter mixture. Continue to brush the mixture on the dough throughout baking process (every 15 minutes or so). Bake for 45 to 55 minutes; keep an eye on the loaf and after it becomes golden brown cover with aluminum foil for rest of baking time. Loaf is done when a toothpick is inserted and comes out clean.

Delicious and easy chicken enchiladas made with a quick indian madras curry sauce

Is there really any reason to mess with the nearly perfect foods of Madras Indian curry or chicken enchiladas? In and of themselves they are quite delicious lil meals, however, I like to mix things up and it was high time these got a remix of their very own. Queue Bollywood/Mariachi mashup song.

I love cooking curries, both of the Thai and Indian variety. Frequent trips to the spice and ethnic grocery stores in our area make this an easy feat to accomplish. I think a lot of people believe curries are difficult to make, but I have found them quite the contrary, especially Thai curries which I have a habit of making far too often.

Recently I learned just how easy it is to make your own homemade enchilada sauce from Mr. Emeril Lagasse. You can find his recipe here. I couldn’t believe how flippin’ simple and quick it was! Seriously so simple and tastes way better than anything you will get in a can. After mastering my homemade enchilada sauce I got to thinking how great curried enchiladas would be. I have never had them before, but I like curry and I like enchiladas. Sounded like a match made in heaven. We have had a tin of Madras Indian Curry powder in our cupboard for some time and it seems we have still barely made a dent in it (it’s a large tin), although I assure you we use it in our cooking quite often.

The tin looks like this.

This is the Madras Curry Powder we use

This Madras Curry Powder has the following ingredients in it: coriander, turmeric, salt, fennel, chili, black pepper, fenugreek, garlic, cumin, bay leaf, ginger, cassia. This curry powder had a good mix of all the spices so I didn’t feel the need to add too much to it. You can play around with other curry blends if you want such as vindaloo or garam masala.

I have to say that this dish turned out amazing with just the right amount of curry flavor and spice. While it may take a little longer to assemble than most people are used to spending on a weeknight meal, I believe you could make a pan or two of this on a weekend and freeze one for when you need it. The thing that takes the longest to cook is the shredded chicken, which cooks in about half hour. You will notice that I didn’t actually roll my enchiladas in this recipe, that was due to my flub of not taking the frozen corn tortillas out of the freezer to thaw prior to starting to cook. Instead I layered the ingredients which made it quicker to assemble and tastes the same as the rolled ones in the end. For the veggies in this recipe I used carrots, peas and fresh chopped spinach, but I encourage you to play around with the veggies you have in your fridge as I am sure they will taste fantastic in this dish.

Now let’s get to messing with the enchiladas, shall we? Or is it messing with the curry?

Steps

1. Prep all ingredients above so they are ready to begin cooking. Preheat oven to 375°

2. Place chicken in a pot and fill with water to cover by a few inches. Put on stove top on High heat. Cook for about 30 minutes until chicken is cooked through and is easy to shred with 2 forks.

3. While chicken is cooking, start on the Madras Curry enchilada sauce. Heat vegetable oil in a medium sized saucepan on Medium heat. Add onions and garlic and cook for a few minutes until tender (they turn a bit translucent). Turn down heat to LOW. (This is very important because you don’t want to burn your flour in the next step)

4. After you have turned heat on onion, garlic mixture to LOW and it has a minute or two to adjust temperature, add in the flour and stir. Cook for 1 minute. (Note: Be sure NOT to burn your flour in this step.) Add in the curry powder and stir. Cook for another 30 seconds. Add the chicken broth and tomato paste and stir until combined. Cook on low until sauce reduces and thickens; about 15 minutes.

5. While curry sauce and chicken are cooking, start on the vegetable blend. Add extra virgin olive oil to a saute pan and heat on Medium heat. Add carrots and cook for several minutes until tender. Add the frozen peas and grated ginger and cook another minute until peas are defrosted. Add chopped spinach and cook until it wilts and moisture is cooked off. Season with a pinch of kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper.

6. Once chicken is cooked through and it easily shreds, pull it out of cooking water and onto a cutting board. Using two forks, shred all of the chicken. Retain about 1/2 cup of the cooking water in the sauce pan, drain rest off. Add the shredded chicken back into pan with remaining water. Add 1/2 cup of the curry sauce to chicken and combine. Cook on Low a few minutes for chicken to season in the sauce mixture.

7. Add a ladle or two of the curry sauce to the bottom of the 9″ x 13″ baking dish and spread around bottom of pan. Place 6 corn tortillas on bottom of baking dish and spoon more sauce over them, spreading to cover. Alternate each layer with the cheese, veggie blend, shredded chicken (be sure to strain the chicken out of the sauce it is cooking in, so it doesn’t get too watery), curry sauce and tortillas. Be sure to finish the final two layers with sauce and then cheese.

8. Place into oven and cook for about 20 minutes until cheese is melted and bubbly. When finished take out of oven and let sit to cool for a minute or two. Slice, garnish and serve.

I’ve been meaning to get this post written all week, however, I’ve been rather busy. Oh wells, life goes on.

The other night we were craving some brownies. I typically insist on making them homemade, because I’m a purist like that (and they are JUST as easy to make with less artificial ingredients), but I happened to have a gluten free Bob’s Red Mill brownie mix in my cupboard that could afford to be used. To my horror we were out of eggs though, so I made the trek down to the store to get some more. I was in luck because they had free range vegetarian fed eggs on sale – two cartons for $5. I don’t see that pricing very often around here for non-conventionally raised eggs, so I obliged and picked up two cartons even though there are only two of us who hardly eat our weight through eggs in a typically week. I figured somehow I was going to find a way to use up these eggs even if it required a week of nothing but deviled eggs. Heh. I’m not that evil.

Enter good idea #1: Quiche. I have to say that I haven’t had many affectionate feelings towards quiche, although I have tried my darn hardest. I like the little mini ones that my mom used to make when she owned a tea shop years ago, but the moment you start talking the 9″ pie sized quiches I get a different idea in my head. It isn’t that the idea of buttery pastry and egg-y filling with delicious mix ins are the issue – it is more the texture of said egg-y filling that I haven’t been a fan of. The large ones always seemed to have a “watery” texture, and I wasn’t sure if that was a consequence of not baking properly, not baking long enough, or using fillings that give off too much juice during baking which ensued an undesirable “watery” texture.

That said, my idea of quiche was transformed a few years ago when I was a starved college student held up at Tea Zone in Portland (If you live in the Portland, OR area you MUST check it out – it’s an awesome tea shop/lounge in the Pearl District). I don’t know if my long hours of studying translated into some type of self-induced hallucinations when I must have quite mistakenly ordered a quiche (or perhaps I thought I had ordered a crumpet, or scone). Either way, no harm nor foul was done to me through subsequent bites (ne scarf-age) of decadent buttery pastry and light egg-y goodness. Quite the opposite actually. My delightful experience with Quiche Lorraine from Tea Zone entirely changed my outlook on quiche.

BEWARE: This recipe or a visit to Tea Zone may just change your mind about quiche as well. So, If you are quite happy hating on quiche, then you better be on your way. Shoo!

My husband wasn’t too thrilled at first mention that I wanted to make quiche for dinner. That’s ok, I pushed ahead. Besides, I knew I could change his mind, and I had eggs to use up damn-it! After it came out of the oven and we dug into it, he was whistling a different tune and went back for seconds, or thirds… He just wasn’t thrilled to take it for lunch the next day so all his macho buddies could tease him about eating quiche (apparently it’s a girly meal). So moral of the story… it was pretty much amazing for dinner, as well as leftovers for lunch the next day, and brunch today! The whole time I was eating it – I elicited images of Julia Child, weird. I will definitely be making this meal again and probably serving it at my next brunch gathering with friends.

For my pastry dough purists out there.. I reluctantly have to tell you that I didn’t make my own pastry dough for this. I know, I know… the shock! the horror! I had a leftover pie shell in the freezer from my holiday pumpkin pies, so I used that instead. Plus, I don’t own a pretty quiche pan. But, that one shortcut alone made this an easy meal to throw together for a weeknight meal. I had bacon left from the gluten free/dairy free Potato Leek Soup I made a few days ago, as well as spinach and basil that I wanted to use up in this recipe. So now you see why my Quiche Lorraine was fortified with additional yummy goodness.

And now you have it.. the recipe. Make it, eat it, weep, and change a few people’s minds about quiche.

1. Take pie shell out of freezer. Prep ingredients above. Preheat oven to 375° and make sure oven rack is on center position.

2. Cook bacon in skillet until crisp. Take out of pan and place on paper towels. Drain bacon fat, but reserve about a teaspoon in pan (you will cook additional ingredients in this). When cool, crumble or chop up bacon.

Now you know I don't have fancy pans, but I can show an onion a good carmelization.

3. Heat pan with reserved bacon grease on medium heat. Add onions and garlic to pan and cook until carmelized, it should be light brown in color.

Caramelized onions meet Spinach. Acquaint yourselves.

4. Add fresh chopped spinach to pan and stir. Add a pinch of kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper and stir. The little bit of salt will help draw the moisture out of the mixture so that it doesn’t make the eggs “watery”. Cook until leaves wilt and moisture cooks out. Add the nutmeg and stir.

5. Crack eggs into a medium sized bowl (or stand mixer) and add cream. Blend the eggs and cream together on low speed for about 15 seconds until it is well beaten. Mix in (by hand) the onion/spinach mixture, bacon, cheese, and basil. Add a pinch of kosher salt and black pepper.

6. Place pie shell on baking sheet. Pour egg mixture into pie shell. Tent the foil over quiche, making sure to cover the crust on all sides to keep your crust from burning during the baking process. Carefully place the baking sheet and quiche into oven (My egg mixture sloshed a bit, but at least it was on the baking sheet and not on my floor or oven).

7. Cook for 35 – 45 minutes. Check after 35 minutes. Quiche is done when egg mixture is set and doesn’t jiggle easily.

8. Take quiche out of oven and let sit for a few minutes prior to slicing and serving. You will notice that when it was in the oven the egg was fluffier, it should set a bit for a flatter top once it is cooling. Slice and garnish with chiffonade of basil or sliced green onion. I served this with a spinach salad.

It's not a load of crock! Your slow cooker loves you. And you'll love this soup!

Last night I had to work late and knew this ahead of time so I figured it was a good night to use our slow cooker. I happen to love using our crock pot and it makes me happy to see that so many other people are now loving theirs again by welcoming it back onto their kitchen counters with open arms. But if I need to try and validate to you why I love it so… well, it reads like a cheap romance novel.

Reason for crock pot love number 1: It cooks for me even when I don’t treat it well. When it’s not ever so sweetly being used by me, I am usually shoving it into the dark recesses of my kitchen cupboards.

Reason number 2: It’s a cheap date. I have never given it more than $5-$10 at any one time and it puts out enough for the two of us… for sometimes several days. Tell me who you can take out for that cheap and treat with such disrespect and force to do almost all the work in the relationship and you reap all the benefits? Yeah, my guess it’s the other way around.

I’ll stop now, because there are probably children in the room…

So now onto soup. 🙂

I had a couple of odd veggies still hanging around and some bacon that I was hoping to get used up this week. So with my meat and two veg (sorry, I can’t help myself), me and my crock pot made us some homemade potato leek soup. The soup turned out super (or rather, souper) yummy even though I decided to not add any cream, butter or milk to it. I had it in mind to keep it a little healthier while still being a comforting winter meal, so I made it a broth based soup. Also, did you notice that it is gluten and dairy free? You’re welcome. Just make sure that the broth base you use is such and everything will be okay. You could even make it vegetarian by leaving out the swine and using vegetable broth.

And speaking of broth… Likely if you don’t have any homemade stock lying around, you probably have to go to the cartons or cans, right? Well I have been using this super convenient and very affordable alternative to canned broth called Better than Bouillon. It is organic and free of MSG and according to my research on surefoodsliving.com is gluten free (but not dairy, corn or soy free). A jar costs under $5 and makes up to 38 8-ounce servings with it… that’s roughly 19 cans of broth which at about $1/can can get rather pricey. All you have to do is scoop out a teaspoon and add it to 8 oz. water. Yep, it’s that easy! This is a picture of what the label on the jar looks like so you you can find it for yourself.

I love using this stuff as an alternative to canned broth when I don't have homemade stock around

Below are the ingredients I prepped and put into the slow cooker and then I did something unimaginable… I plugged it in and turned the notch to ‘low’ and left it to occupy itself for about 7 hours. Yep that was it!

You really don’t need to measure any of this out, just start dumping things in the crock pot. It doesn’t mind… it can take a beating.

Servings: at least 4, but i’ll let you know in a few days when we’re done eating it